Yes, it is rather stupid to do that. Most likely they will still be in debt and not on track for retirement or college savings in 5 years with that financial mentality. Once kids are college age, they will complain about being "donut hole" family and how it's just not fair they don't have $100K+ per year for college per kid and "how could I have possibly saved for that on my income" |
Oh FFS! (NP here.) If you don't relax just a little, you may never live long enough to enjoy your retirement. Have a great time in California and enjoy that campaign when you board the plane, PP. |
It is definately that mentality that gets people to be at the "donut hole" stage and wonder how they got there. Go on the vacation, just do it in economy plus and save the $1K extra and put it towards debt. It's a 5-6 hour flight, not a 24 hour flight to India/China. Most financially stable people cannot imagine flying first class when you have debt and young kids (and all the expenses that will come with them). You can enjoy life within a budget |
Clearly you didn’t read same PP who said they invest heavily in retirement funds and kids college savings accounts, and other investment vehicles. |
I was talking about winter break prices, not summer. We flew economy plus to Europe and business on the way back for $3k per person. The extra 5k I mentioned on my post is $1k pp extra to fly back on a Sunday vs Monday where kids would miss a day of school. This is economy, not even first class. All I was saying was there is a big difference between peak and off peak. We have a $2-3m HHI and we upgrade sometimes. I’m going to the west coast in a few weeks and decided to just do economy plus. It was still $1k. Maybe I will decide to upgrade. I’m fine watching a movie or two in economy plus for 5 hours. |
Pp again. I just checked and it would cost 3500 to upgrade to first class from economy plus. I would do that for Asia and maybe Europe but not to California. |
The PP stated they "have debt". Nowhere in that post (maybe another one) did they state they invest heavily in retirement and college for kids. I stand by if you "have debt" you don't spend an extra $1k+ on first class, you put it towards the debt. |
It is certainly possible to enjoy your life without flying first class. Domestic first class isn’t even every fancy. |
+1 Cannot imagine paying for first class (I get economy plus type) if I have debt. Then again, it's likely that mentality that got them "into debt". I define debt as anything other than mortgage and car loan but in reality, I wouldn't personally pay for first class until I could pay cash for my cars (unless the loan is 0.9% or less). |
You would do that traveling solo or for your whole family? We travel as 4 and when we flew to Asia, the economy plus was an amazing price and first was exorbitant (>6k). Sure maybe we would have considered it at a lower price but I think we'd need to plan our trips a year in advance for best pricing and it's impossible with sports and school schedules often coming out last minute. We also travel too much so it would add up a lot. I certainly don't judge if that is your spending preference though! |
We will pay for Premium Economy, but ONLY on an overnight and overseas flight which is longer than 6 hours. We then will try to upgrade from that using miles, but those upgrades are very much a dice roll.
Shorter than 6 hours, daytime, not overseas, or within the 49 states gets economy. Hawaii varies on route and time of day - daytime via LAX no, but non-stop from IAD and overnight then yes to Premium Economy. |
Maybe if you really like working? We are trying to retire ASAP and would not be willing to work longer just to buy first class tickets. |
I have calculated my retirement based on our need to afford four international round trip tickets a year. To me that is worth an extra year or so of work. |
We love to travel but first class just isn’t important to us on most trips. When it is important we use miles. |
Even mortgage debt? |